Revealing What is Hidden

Fourth Sunday of Advent

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Recently the fifth season of the western-drama, “Yellowstone” finished up.  Like most TV shows, the audience is given a divine-like view, where they know what is going on, while the characters in the show have to figure things out for themselves.  This fifths season begins with the death of one of the major characters, and while the death is initially ruled a suicide, the TV audience knows that, quoting Shakespeare, “there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.”
    I think that many television shows, especially, but not only, dramas, rely on the human desire to play God.  We don’t want to wait for God to bring to light those things hidden in the darkness.  We want to know now all that is going on, even the things that don’t seem to make sense or those that confound us.  
    St. Paul promises that God will reveal all hidden things when the Lord returns.  And in some sense, we might enjoy this.  When many people talk about heaven, they talk about an eternal Q & A session with God, asking questions as profound as why this person had to die, or why that person got to live, to the more mundane and silly questions like whether Adam and Eve had belly buttons, or who killed JR (you might have to be a little older to get that reference).  
    It’s also something to which we look forward because often there are serious questions to which we could never know the answer for sure.  We sense a lack of justice when we don’t know if the guilty party received punishment or not.  Think about how much ink has been spilled about whether Lee Harvey Oswald truly killed President Kennedy, and whether he acted alone or was part of a grander conspiracy, whether with the Mafia or perhaps even with our own government.  When those who, ostensibly, do not get punished for the wrong they do, especially prominent people like actors, musicians, athletes, and politicians, our desire for justice seems unfulfilled, like there’s no resolution that satisfies.
    However, bringing to light what has remained hidden in darkness cuts both ways.  It doesn’t only apply to actors, musicians, athletes, and politicians.  It applies to us as well.  The things that we work so hard to hide from others, whether simply out of embarrassment or perhaps out of true shame and contrition, Christ will also manifest as He judges us.  That, I imagine, delights us a bit less than the idea of knowing where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.  I imagine we would like to know the secrets of others, but we probably don’t want them to know our own secrets.
    Of course, the Lord knows it all.  He is omniscient.  He sees all time as at once, and knows the causes and the effects of every action and reaction.  Nothing we could do could ever be hidden from him.  And yet, God chooses to forgive us for those wrong actions, and, when we are truly sorry and confess our sins, He no longer holds those things against us, no matter how secret they may be.  Yes, those sinful actions still happened, and yes, they still echo through their consequences, but God does not hold them against us at our judgment if we are contrite and confess.  Those sins going from being things of shame to being opportunities to grow in the grace of God, who transforms our sins into healing, just as God healed the death of sin through taking death upon Himself, though He had no sin Himself.  

    But, as we approach the celebration of the Nativity of the Lord, we also have another aspect of revealing what was hidden.  And that is God Himself.  True, God had revealed Himself, as the author of the Letter to the Hebrews states, in various and sundry ways.  But the birth of our Savior was a true revelation, the revelation, of who God is.  When Christ came in the flesh, even though the flesh sometimes hid his divinity, it also revealed it.  One of the Christmas songs I hate, and I consider it at least partially heretical, is “Mary, Did You Know?”  And one of the lines I think is heretical is, “Mary, did you know / […] when you kiss your little baby / You’ve kissed the face of God?”  First of all, yes, she did know, because the Archangel Gabriel told her.  But more importantly, in the Incarnation, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who was pure spirit, took flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and after He was born, we all saw God any time we saw Christ.  Throughout His life, the Savior revealed God as the one who loves sinners, but hates sin; as the one who welcomes those who wander away, but condemns those who make obstacles to repentance; as the one who heals the sick with tenderness, but casts out vendors from the Temple; as the one who dies for our sins, but rises on the third day because death cannot cancel out life.  God does not hide himself, but reveals Himself, so that we can access salvation.
    Though not my favorite season of “Yellowstone,” this, what I believe to be, final season draws people in by allowing them to know what remains hidden from the characters in the show, at least at first.  Through our upcoming celebration of our Lord’s birth, may we rejoice at the revelation that had remained hidden, only suggested and pointed to from afar by the prophets, the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Actions & Consequences and A Freely-Given Gift

 Fourth Sunday of Lent

    When I was growing up, if we were flirting with trouble (mostly my sisters, because I was a perfect angel, of course!), my parents would say things like: if I have to pull this car over…; don’t you even think about it…; or other such tried and true methods.  They were not cruel, it was just a very direct form of discipline.  As all of us kids turned our pretty well, I’d say it worked.  But my sister Amanda, the only one with kids right now, often uses the phrase, “Make good choices.”  I’d call that the softer approach, but my nieces are also pretty well-behaved (at least, as far as I know), so that approach apparently can work, too!
    One major aspect of raising children is to help them to understand the consequences of their actions.  If you draw on the wall with crayons, you get time-out.  If you touch the hot stove, you get burned.  If you don’t do your homework, you don’t get to play outside (nowadays it’s more likely play video games or play on your phone).  If you break curfew, you’re grounded.  These small lessons about actions and consequences are meant to help young people understand that if we make good choices, there are, generally, good consequences.  If we make bad choices, there are, generally, bad consequences.
    We see that in the first reading today, and even, to an extent, in our Gospel.  The Books of Chronicles of the Old Testament are the abridged versions of the Books of Kings, explaining the actions of the kings of Judah and Israel.  The lesson at the end of the Second Book of Kings, our first reading today, is that the people made bad choices.  They worshipped foreign gods, they mistreated the poor, they trusted earthly riches and powers more than God, they did not live as God’s Chosen People.  God sent them messengers to tell them to make better choices, but they never listened.  And what was the consequence?  The Temple, the great house of God, was destroyed, and the people were exiled into Babylon.  To echo Bishop Barron, there’s a sort of spiritual mathematics going on.  If you add sin upon sin, you get death, like 2 + 2 = 4.  Notice, that death doesn’t only come because of sin (we see that in other books of the Old Testament), just like 4 can be added to with a few different combinations.  But certain actions have certain consequences, or, to put it in St. Paul’s words, “The wages of sin is death.”  
    Jesus, too, and John the Evangelist, give us this same idea in the Gospel.  “Whoever believes in [Jesus] will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned.”  Again, the spiritual mathematics of the importance of believing in Jesus.  Or, later on, John continues that evil means darkness, whereas God means light.  If we do evil things, we envelope ourselves in darkness.  If we do good things, we are surrounded by light.  This is part of the push to the New Evangelization.  We who have received the light (which will be powerfully demonstrated at the Easter Vigil, as we enter into a dark church, at first only illumined by the Paschal Candle which represents Christ), have a responsibility to share it with others.  And we should not prefer darkness to light, because otherwise we’ll find condemnation.
    But this can tend us to the idea that, if we just check off the right boxes, then we’ll be good.  It makes us the author of our salvation, rather than God.  It pretends that we have what it takes to save ourselves.  If that were so, certainly Abraham, or Moses, or Isaiah would have been in heaven as soon as they died.  But they couldn’t be in heaven without Jesus' saving Death and Resurrection.  Even those just men and women of the Old Testament couldn’t get to heaven on their own.  They, and we, are saved by grace, by the gift of God; it is not earned.
    But Fr. Anthony, you may be saying, you just got done saying that good choices lead to good consequences.  Yes, I did.  But all the good choices in the world couldn’t open up heaven.  It was the consequence of the death of Jesus on the cross that allowed us to enter heaven.  His good choice led to our good consequences.  “God, who is rich in mercy,…” says St. Paul, “brought us to life with Christ….For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God.”  Try getting to heaven without Jesus; it’s impossible.  You might be able to get halfway there every day, but you’ll never get all the way there.  Jesus is the only one who makes salvation possible.  And He’s the only one who gives us what we need to accept that gift of salvation.  If those in other religions are saved, the Church says, it’s still only because of Jesus.  Moses does not save people (nor did he claim to).  Mohammed does not save people.  Buddha does not save people.  Only Jesus does.  And anyone who is saved, is saved only through the Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus.  
    God invites us to salvation.  He invites us to open the gift that He has prepared for us.  But, as with any gift, we can choose whether or not to accept it.  In that way, we’re back to actions and consequences.  If we accept God’s free gift of salvation, heaven is for us.  How do we know that we have accepted that gift?  By the way we live our life; by the good choices we make in response to that gift, because of our love for God.  We can’t earn it, but neither can we receive it without responding to it.  God did not come to condemn us; He sent Jesus to save us.  But the way that we can grab ahold of that salvation is to respond to the gift, to live as Jesus invites us; to make good choices when presented with the free gift of salvation.

Why are you here?

Solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lord

            Why did you come here this morning?  Why interrupt the family celebrations, the excitement of opening presents?  Why brave the elements?  Maybe you don't have power.  There are many other answers, too, perhaps as many as there are people in this church.  And there is only one answer: because God wants you here.

            God wants you here like He wanted the shepherds to visit that cave where Jesus was born.  Somewhere in your hearts He sent His angel to proclaim to you the “good news of great joy”, that, “today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.”   And we ourselves joined in the angelic song, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to people of good will.” 

            God wants you to be here because He has a gift for you, and a gift He wants from you.  The gift He gives to you is Himself.  The gift He wants from you is yourself.  His gift can only be received if your gift is given.  God’s very life, which we call grace, is offered to you this night.  It is like a bottle of wine waiting to be poured into the glass of your soul.  But in order for the wine to be poured, you first has to offer Him your glass, because God will not force His gift upon you. 

            It’s strange, isn’t it?  That our God, who created all the exists: the heavens, the earth, and all that dwells in them—the  angels, the animals, the waters, the mountains, the stars, the galaxies—God who created all this and who has unlimited power, will not overwhelm us with this power, but waits for our yes to His invitation.  It’s strange that, when our God decided to take on human flesh, He did not come as a Roman Emperor from the West, or as a Persian priest from the East, but as a baby.  But that is exactly what happened.

            We probably all want God’s gift.  Who would not want to receive the very life of God?  Who would not want to love of God, the peace of God, the joy of God to flow through our very souls?  We all want God’s gift.  But we are more hesitant to give God His gift from us.  We all want God’s life, but we shrink back at giving God our life.  We hesitate at the idea that we would turn over to God our time, even our focused time of around an hour each Sunday.  We falter at the idea that God would be in control of our life and direct our actions and words.  We pause when we consider that God might take us somewhere we don’t want to go.

            Fear.  It can be paralyzing.  Fear can stop us from doing what we truly want to do.  We all have fear at giving our gift to God, the gift of our entire life.  I still have areas of my heart that do no belong to Jesus fully.  Why?  Because I am afraid that I will miss that part of my life if I give it away.  I do not trust that God will truly be enough for me.  Yes, much of my life belongs to the Lord, but there are still parts that I hold back.  Maybe you haven’t visited your Catholic home, the church, for a while.  Maybe it took all your courage just to come here today.  First and foremost: welcome home!  We love you and we have missed you.  Maybe you come every week, but the practice of your faith ends as you walk out these doors.  We love you, too, and encourage you to share your faith with others.  We all have parts of our lives that are not fully given over to Jesus.  Some of us have held back more than others.  But no matter how much we have reserved from God, we are all called to band together, to be courageous together, and to support each other in giving our entire lives to God.  We lose nothing when we give ourselves away.  In fact, in Divine Irony, we only lose our life when we fail to give it away.

           

What we celebrate today is the scandalous fact that God, whom the heavens and earth cannot contain, took flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary.  Why?  So that our fear could be melted by one who was like us in all things but sin; so that we could have the audacity to give ourselves entirely over to the Lord; so that the yoke of sin that burdens us, the pole of guilt on our shoulders, the rod of slavery to sin of our taskmaster could be smashed and we could be set free; so that the grace of God, the life of God, could train us “to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age, as we await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ,” as St. Paul says in his letter to St. Titus; so that we could live in the light of Christ, which shines in the darkness of ignorance, falsehood, and lies, and the darkness does not overcome it, as St. John says in the Prologue of his Gospel; so that we could receive from the fullness of God, “grace in place of grace,” again as St. John says in his Gospel. 

            Today God wants you here.  He wants to give you the gift of Himself.  But He will not force His gift on you.  You and I must be open to that gift by giving God our entire life: nothing more, nothing less.  If we are open to it, God will change us to be more like Him, which will give us true happiness.  And if we are like God, then this world, wrapped in the double darkness of sin and ignorance, will also be changed into a light of holiness and truth, the world in which we all want to live.

Who Do You Know Better? Justin or Jesus?

Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            It seems like anytime there is a great tragedy, especially a natural disaster, in a mainly Catholic area, like Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, or the earthquakes in Chile, certain fringe televangelists will blame it on the Catholics.  We are charged with believing in magic and the power of works, not faith and grace.  In fact, the words, “hocus pocus” come from a play on the Latin words of institution, hoc est corpus, and was used to accuse Catholics of believing that just by saying the right words, the bread and wine could become the Body and Blood of Jesus as if by magic.

Statue of St. Paul from the Patriarchal Basilica
of St. Paul Outside the Walls

            In today’s second reading, St. Paul makes it very clear that the Law, the law given by God through Moses on Mt. Sinai to the people of Israel, does not save people.  It just not justify, or bring them into right relationship with God.  Only by grace, “through the redemption in Christ Jesus…by his blood” are we brought into right relationship with God.  This idea may seem very Protestant, but, as we know, St. Paul was Catholic.  He was a great missionary of the one Church Jesus founded.  And so we Catholics cling to this idea.  There is nothing that we can do that can earn us salvation. 

            And, in case you don’t trust St. Paul, and believe me, some Catholics get a little leery about him (mostly, I think, because they’re afraid that he bolsters the Protestant claims), we can look to Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel.  Jesus says that just because we call Him Lord; just because we prophesy in Jesus’ name; just because we exorcise demons in Jesus’ name; just because we do mighty deeds in Jesus’ name, does not mean that we will go to heaven.  In fact, to those who do those great deeds but do not do the will of the Father in heaven, Jesus will say, “‘I never knew you.  Depart from me, you evildoers.’” 

            So, if prophecy, exorcisms, and mighty deeds done in the name of Jesus don’t get us in, what will?  Those things can “get us in,” so to speak, if they are the will of God for us in our lives.  But if not, then we must be sure that we are doing the will of God as it is made known to us in our lives.  There is no magical thing to do to get into heaven.  Not even dying for the faith, if we do not have love and a right relationship with Jesus, will get us into heaven, as St. Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians in the famous hymn of love that we hear so often at weddings.

            Being Catholic is not about doing the right things.  It is not about saying the right words.  Yes, we do need to do the right things and say the right words, but those acts, those words, to be helpful to our salvation must first come from a relationship with Jesus.  As Catholics we can easily fall into the trap of thinking that our salvation is caused by the things we do.  As long as we are baptized; as long as we confess our sins to the priest; as long as we receive communion; as long as we give money to the Church, then we’ll be saved.  And certainly baptism is the ordinary way that God cleanses His children from original sin and brings them into a right relationship with Him; certainly if we sin after Baptism, especially mortally, then we need to confess to a priest as the ordinary means of gaining forgiveness from God; certainly we need to come to Mass each Sunday to receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ to give us the strength to live out our lives as disciples; certainly being good stewards of the gifts and talents and time God has given us shows that we appreciate those blessings and give our best back to God.  The sacraments surely cause grace, but those graces call for a response from us.

            So the question for us is: how is our relationship with Jesus?  How well do we know Jesus?  Do we know Him as well as we know the Pope (which, for most of us means that we’re familiar with the guy, but we don’t really know what he’s like)?  Do we know Jesus as well as we know Justin Bieber, Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, or Katy Perry (which means that we probably know everything about them [and believe me, I know a fair amount of young girls who know everything about Justin Bieber], but without really having a friendship with them)?  Do we know Jesus as well as we know our friends (which means that we know a lot about them, and we know them personally, but there are still some things that we don’t share with them)?  Or do we know Jesus like and even better than we know our best friend or like we know our spouse (which means that we share everything with Jesus, joys and sorrows, graces and sins)?    In case you’re wondering, it’s the last one that we should be aiming for.

            What you’ll find, the closer to you get to Jesus, is that there are fewer things in life that can shake you.  As you become closer to Jesus, the house of faith that you build becomes more like a house built on the rock and less like on the sand, so that when traumatic events in life come: the loss of a job; the loss of a family member; attacks on our faith, etc., while they still shake the house a little, the house of faith is not washed away.  In a time when everything seems so changeable, where there’s a new iPad, iPod, or iPhone every year, and when nothing seems to stay the same, we can be sure that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, always relevant, but never changing.  We need that stability in our lives, and nothing else can live up to that desire for total stability, not even another person.

            We as Catholics do not believe in magic.  It is not just the right words that we say or the right deeds that we do.  Being a disciple, a good disciple, is all about how close we are to Jesus, our relationship with Him, and then responding to that love that He pours upon us in the Sacraments and in our daily lives.  My prayer is that our house of faith will be built on the rock of Jesus and will stand the many trials and tests that come along in life so that when we come before Jesus, the Judge of the Living and the Dead, we will not hear, “‘“I never knew you.  Depart from me, you evildoers,”’” but, “‘Come, good and faithful servant.  Enter into the joy prepared for you by my Father.’”

Jesus' Landscaping Company

Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

            On Thursday I had the pleasure of going up to Camp Leelanau with the seventh-graders from St. Thomas Aquinas School.  I went to spend time with them and to offer Mass for them on Friday morning.  One of the things they did while there was a ropes course.  I was really impressed when they, while secured to a steel cable, had to jump from one platform to another, which was about 3-4 feet away.  Oh, and did I mention that they were about 20 feet in the air?

            Many of the students did jump, and really demonstrated to me an example of a very natural faith.  The kids had to have faith that they were securely fastened to the steel cables, and that if they jumped, they would land on the other side safe and sound, or just dangle from the cable if they missed.

            In the Gospel passage today, when the apostles ask for more faith, the Lord says that if they had just a small amount of faith, they could make a mulberry tree plant itself in the sea.  The point here is not so much that Jesus is opening a landscaping company, but that faith allows the disciple of the Lord to do what seems impossible.  The Lord is not advocating that, when we want to redecorate our yard, we make an act of faith, and then tell the maple tree to switch places with the oak tree in our front yard, or for the extra mound of dirt in the back yard to fill in the valley in our front yard, but to have faith in the work of the Lord: the salvation of our souls.

            What stands in the way of that salvation is not a mulberry tree, but sin.  Sin blocks the relationship that God wants to have with us by putting other, lesser goods higher than the will of God, which should be the greatest good that we’re pursuing.  It leads us to think that, rather than being a servant, who should be waiting on the master, and making sure he is happy, doing only what we were obliged to do by our status as servant, that we are the master who should be waited on.  It gives us a false view of reality.

            Now, we probably all know this, both intellectually and by experience.  And I’m sure that many of you have prayed that your temptations might cease.  Your words probably echoed the sentiments of Habakkuk from our first reading: “How long, O LORD?  I cry for help but you do not listen!  I cry out to you…but you do not intervene.  Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?”  We may wonder why the Lord allows us to fall into the same, maybe major or grave, or minor sins.

            Or course, it isn’t the Lord’s fault that we sin.  When we sin we are exercising our free will.  But the Lord doesn’t just leave us to ourselves.  He gives us the great gift of the sacraments to assist us in making the Lord’s will our own, and choosing actions which are in accord with His will.

            In baptism, when either our parents or we first ask for faith, the Lord answers our prayers.  He gives us this gift of faith, to trust in the Lord and to overcome the obstacles of sin.  That’s right: all of you have the grace to avoid all mortal sins by virtue of your baptism.  And you have an even greater gift through Confirmation when the baptismal promises are reaffirmed and the gift of grace is increased.  By your baptism, God gives you all the sufficient grace for avoiding mortal sins.  He allows you to move the trees of sin which stand in the way of your holiness, into the abyss of the sea of darkness where sins belong.  We can think of the graces of baptism and confirmation like a spring, welling up in a river.  As long as we do not block the spring with the rocks of sin, then the waters will flow freely.  But we must allow, by our freedom, to let those waters flow.

            This teaching, that we all have the ability to remain free from mortal sin, may seem new to us.  You might be asking yourself, ‘Well, if I have this gift, how come it hasn’t worked yet?’  The gift is not forced upon us.  Like any other gift, it does not become ours if we do not receive it in freedom.  ‘Well then, Fr. Anthony, how do I receive it?’ 

            St. Paul tells us in the second reading: “stir into flame the gift of God that you have.”  Of course, when talking to St. Timothy, St. Paul was talking about his ordination, when St. Paul laid hands on St. Timothy to impart to him the spring of graces of the Sacrament of Holy Order.  But the same principle applies to our baptism and confirmation: we have that grace like hot embers, and all we must do is to stir that gift into flame by the fuel of our prayers to God, asking for His assistance to avoid sin and be faithful to the Gospel.  Just as a loving father does not give a snake to his child asking for a fish, or a stone when his child asks for a piece of bread, so our Father, if we truly want to avoid major sins, will give us the grace to avoid those sins and remain faithful to him. 

“God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather of power and love and self-control.”  We have the ability to do great things because of our faith in God granted to us by baptism, and confirmed in confirmation.  Let us remove the obstacles in our life that prevent that grace from flowing, so that we might enjoy forever the eternal banquet that Jesus has prepared for us, where He, the Master, will wait on us, the servants as a reward for our fidelity to Him on earth.